Author Archives: Elahe Izadi

December 27, 2011 | 11:25 AM | By

Why Crime is High Where Housing Voucher Users Live

Ian Britton / Flickr

Typically when there’s a move to provide more affordable housing in a neighborhood, some existing residents rail against it. One of their main concerns: people using housing vouchers, or government subsidies to pay rent, bring crime.

Yes, crime rates do tend to be higher in neighborhoods where many people use housing vouchers. But it’s not because those individuals increase crime — it’s because they move into neighborhoods where crime is already increasing, according to a recent study [PDF].

Researchers at New York University’s Wagner School and Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy examined the relationship between housing vouchers and crime in ten U.S. cities, including D.C. Their evidence shows that people using vouchers choose to live in neighborhoods where crime is high and rising.

That may be due to a number of reasons. As crime increases, vacancies increase and rents drop, meaning landlords may be more willing to take people using housing vouchers. Also, voucher holders can only live in neighborhoods with affordable rental housing, “and they may only know about—or feel comfortable pursuing—a certain set of those neighborhoods, given their networks of social and family ties,” the study’s authors note.

More than 11,000 D.C. families use housing vouchers. The D.C. Housing Authority launched an initiative this summer, Beyond the Voucher, to help such families dispel the negative stereotypes often associated with housing voucher holders.

FILED UNDER: Around the City, Affordable Housing, Crime
December 27, 2011 | 9:48 AM | By

Race and Mortgages: Bank of America Settles $335M Bias Suit

Bank of America has agreed to pay $335 million to settle a lawsuit alleging its Countrywide unit discriminated against black and Latino borrowers.  Sub-prime mortgage lending that targeted minority neighborhoods is one of the major factors behind the recent decline of the black middle class. The D.C. suburb hardest-hit by the foreclosure crisis is Prince George’s County, home to a large black middle and upper class.


Here is the ugly story made brief. According to [the U.S. Justice Department], Countrywide overcharged more than 200,000 black and Hispanic borrowers for their loans. About 10,000 were sold risky subprime mortgages, even though their finances were good enough to qualify for cheaper prime rates. Black customers who obtained their mortgages through a Countrywide-affiliated broker were more than twice as likely to get a subprime loan than similar white borrowers. In some markets, they were as much as eight times more likely.

Read more at: www.theatlantic.com

December 26, 2011 | 2:07 PM | By

How to Get Low-Income People Bike-Sharing

DDOT DC / Flickr

Bike-sharing may be one of the cheapest methods of public transportation in D.C., but you can’t use a bike without a credit card. That poses a big challenge in the District, where more than 12 percent of households are unbanked, meaning they don’t have access to financial instruments like bank accounts.

D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare launched a program this month to get more people credit cards so they can use the bikes, The Atlantic Cities reports:

Capital Bikeshare partnered with United Bank, the District Government Employees Federal Credit Union, and Bank on DC, a collaborative between the city, local financial institutions and non-profits working to provide greater access to financial products in the District. Residents can open a Bank on DC account with none of the minimum balances or monthly fees that frequently serve as an obstacle.

Through Bank on DC, Capital Bikeshare will offer a discounted $50 annual membership to residents who don’t currently use a bank but sign up for a debit or credit account through either the District employees credit union or United Bank.

Increasing access to credit cards is only one way to get more low-income people riding. Capital Bikeshare works best when bike stations are clustered together. Stations east of the Anacostia River, in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, are fewer in number and spread further apart than in wealthier and denser sections of Northwest. But access east of the river is improving; in May, there were nine stations, and now there are 13.

FILED UNDER: Public Transportation, Capital Bikeshare, Class
December 26, 2011 | 12:14 PM | By

Bringing Classical Music to the Masses

More than 83 percent of classical music audience members are white, and a disproportionate number of them are older and wealthier than audience members of other music genres, according to a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts report.

Rick Robinson wants to change that. The bassist will soon leave his position at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra after 22 years to spearhead an effort to bring classical music to younger and more diverse audiences. He speaks with NPR’s Guy Raz about CutTime Players of Detroit, an eight-piece ensemble that will be touring smaller venues and his work in “blend[ing] classical and urban pop styles.”

December 26, 2011 | 9:29 AM | By

Gentrification Without Displacement?

Can gentrification bring economic prosperity into a neighborhood while not displacing low-income residents? Salon.com’s Will Doig looks into whether gentrification can work for everyone by examining changes in D.C. neighborhoods. He writes, “Some displacement will always occur, and that’s upsetting,” but people in low-income neighborhoods had been “forced out” for decades by crime, drugs and “other conditions that made those places unlivable.”


“Gentrification” is like the secret word in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse — say it and everyone freaks out.

“It’s possibly the most charged word in the built environment right now,” says Christopher Leinberger, the well-known urbanist and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The image of mustachioed, trust-fund hipsters displacing poor people of color will do that.

And that’s a shame, because gentrification has some undeniable upsides: reduced crime, better services and a more diverse array of businesses — and not just coffee shops. “As a Detroit native who has seen this place rot from the inside-out, I’d kill for a little gentrification,” Detroit Free Press editor Stephen Henderson recently tweeted.

Reconciling the two edges of that sword — improvement versus displacement — is becoming a more urgent issue with each passing year as cities continue to rapidly transform. Rather than being seen as an injustice, can gentrification correct an injustice by returning prosperity to a long-neglected neighborhood? A good place to start looking for answers to these questions is Washington, D.C.

Read more at: www.salon.com

December 23, 2011 | 12:00 PM | By

Celebrating the Holidays By Giving Back

If you’re looking to celebrate the holidays by giving back to the community, check out HuffPost DC’s list of volunteer opportunities.

Happy holidays, DCentric readers!


With the holiday season in full swing, many are taking time to lend a hand to less fortunate residents in the D.C. area. Several groups are still looking for volunteers. They need help with nursing home visitations, delivering meals to people with life-threatening illnesses, fostering animals still looking for homes and much more.

Read more at: www.huffingtonpost.com

December 23, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Addressing Food Deserts, One Corner Store At a Time (Video)

There are a number of low-income communities in D.C. where residents lack access to fresh and healthy food — mostly in Wards 5, 7 and 8. Nonprofit D.C. Central Kitchen launched an initiative over the summer to deliver fresh produce to corner stores in D.C.’s food deserts. They also provide small refrigerators for the food. The program, Healthy Corners, is partially funded through a $300,000 grant from the city.

This video, produced by Run Riot Films, follows a D.C. Central Kitchen employee as he delivers the produce to stores. “There are so many places in D.C. where people can’t get healthy meals, healthy foods,” he says. “I think that’s a travesty of justice. It should not be like that.”

December 22, 2011 | 2:00 PM | By

Sugary Drink Marketing Aimed At Minority Children?

Black and Latino children may be disproportionately affected by advertisements marketing drinks with high sugar content, such as sodas and sports drinks. That’s according to a new study released by the nonprofit Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. Jennifer Harris of the organization explains about how marketers target minority children with ads.


How are marketers specifically targeting Black and Latino youth with sugary drink ads?

“We don’t know for sure that the marketers are targeting anyone because we don’t have access to their internal strategy documents. So what we do is look at the data and ask a couple of questions. We ask if they’re using techniques that appeal more to one group or another. For example, Sprite has a step-and-jerk dance competition, which is popular among Black, inner-city youth; that would be an indicator they’re targeting Black youth. Or any kind of Spanish-language advertising would be obvious that they’re targeting a Latino audience.

“We know how many Black or Latino youth are seeing different advertising, so we compare that to how many ads white youth are seeing, and the data show us what products are reaching disproportionately more Black or Latino youth.”

Read more at: www.saludtoday.com

December 22, 2011 | 12:00 PM | By

National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day: Honoring Those Who Died

In 2011, 67 homeless people died in D.C. Their lives were commemorated Wednesday night at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church as part of National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. WAMU 88.5′s Markette Smith reports there are 6,000 homeless people in the District.


Neil Donovan is the executive director for the National Coalition for the Homeless. He says of those who die on the streets, many succumb to weather-related illnesses, such as hypothermia.

Read more at: wamu.org

December 22, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Reducing Unemployment With New D.C. Law

D.C. has an unemployment divide; in some neighborhoods, unemployment is 3 percent, while in others it’s 26 percent. One effort to lessen the disparity is to revamp the District’s First Source law, which requires developers receiving city money for projects to fill 51 percent of new jobs with D.C. residents. Mayor Vincent Gray signed a bill into law Wednesday that increases reporting provisions and fines to make certain that developers are meeting hiring requirements; audits have shown that contractors rarely met the requirements under the old law. The new First Source law could help make a dent in high unemployment.

But the law doesn’t apply to private businesses not receiving public money. Hundreds of people have been hired for such businesses through the District’s One City One Hire initiative. Meanwhile, nearly 36,000 D.C. residents remain unemployed.

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  • Source: Dc

“The bill that I am signing into law today enhances our ability to do what First Source was originally designed to do: ensure that District residents get hired for projects funded by District taxpayers,” said Mayor Gray. “This legislation ensures that First Source is actually being implemented properly.”

Read more at: mayor.dc.gov